Here it is halfway through April and I have not even mentioned National Poetry Month.  This poem, introduced to me by The Writer's Almanac, delights me on many levels.  All my sons are deer hunters, but one spent time as a "team member" in a red polo shirt in Target.  Enjoy!

A Deer in the Target 
by Robert Fanning 

I only got a ten-second shot,
grainy footage of the huge deer
caught in the crosshairs
of a ceiling security camera, a scene
of utter chaos in a strip mall store,
shown on the late local news.
The beautiful beast clearly scared
to death in this fluorescent forest,
its once graceful legs giving out
on mopped floors, think Bambi
as a fawn its first time standing.
Seeing the scattering shoppers,
you'd think a demon had barged
into this temple of commerce,
as they sacrificed their merchandise,
stranded full carts and dove for cover.
And when the aisles were emptied
of these bargain hunters, who was left
but an army of brave red-shirted
team members, mobilized by
the store manager over the intercom
to drive this wild animal out.
I wager there's nothing on this
in the How to Approach
an Unsatisfied Shopper
section in the Target employee handbook,
but there they were: the cashiers
and stockers, the Floor Supervisor,
the Assistant Floor Supervisor,
the Store Manager,
the Assistant Store Manager,
the District Associate Manager,
the District Supervisor,
the District Assistant Supervisor
and visiting members from
the Regional Corporate Office,
running after it, it running after
them, bull's eye logos on their red golf shirts,
everyone frenzied and panting: razor hooves
clattering on the mirror-white floor tiles,
nostrils heaving, its rack clearing
off-season clothes from clearance racks.
All of them, in Target,
chasing the almighty buck.

 

"Nothing seems particularly grim
if your head is clear
and your teeth are clean
and your bowels function properly."

The problem is how to characterize How to Cook a Wolf.   

~  It is a cookbook, but one with only 75 recipes added like seasoning to the prose.  Along the way you will learn how to cook fish, eggs, fritattas, polenta, gravy, bread and War Cake.

~  It is a book on frugality.

~  It is a survival book including a basic recipe for a gruel/sludge that will keep you alive.

~  It is sort of a social history, illuminating life at home during the second world war.

~  It is a dialog between the author and herself.  She wrote the book in 1942 and revised it in 1954.  The original is kept intact and revisions added in [brackets].  This is one of the most entertaining features.  As any writer knows, reading your work at a later date can make you alternately wince or nod your head.  Fisher, an opinionated writer, tends to argue with herself, retract a statement or two; but she admits at the end of one chapter that she is pleased with what she wrote. 

~   It is a book worth reading for its delightful prose.  W. H. Auden wrote about M.F.K. Fisher "I do not know of anyone in the United States today who writes better prose."  Here's what I want you to do: click on the link above, click on the picture of the book "Click to Look Inside" and read the table of contents.  I don't know any other book with better chapter titles. 

If you are curious about the wolf in the title, it comes from the ditty by C.P.S. Gilman: There's a whining at the threshold.  There's a scratching at the floor.  To work! To work! In Heaven's name! The wolf is at the door! 

Here's some morsels of Fisher's writing to further tempt you:

"A fathom," he showed me stretching wide
in his black three-piece suit and silver watch chain,
"is the measure of the arms across the body from fingertip to fingertip
because fathom, or a word like it, faethm,
was the Old Northern European word for embrace."
   
~Frank Delaney in Simple Courage: The True Story of Peril on the Sea.

This is the kind of stuff that makes my heart race:  using a word for a measurement from the universally understood action of embrace.  Here's more.

A fathom is now a nautical measure of six feet,
but it was once defined by an act of Parliament as
"the length of a man's arms around the object of his affections."
The word derives from the Old English faethm,
meaning "the embracing arms."  

from The QPB Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins   

When we speak of mysteries beyond comprehension, we call them unfathomable.  You can't wrap your arms (or your mind) around it.  Carson, my son who worked on a seiner fishing for salmon in Alaska, said, "Something is unfathomable when you run out of rope." 

Q.  What is your only comfort, in life and in death?

A.  That I belong--body and soul, in life and in death--
not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ,
who at the cost of his own blood has fully paid for all my sins
and has completely freed me from the dominion of the devil;

that he protects me so well
that without the will of my Father in heaven
not a hair can fall from my head;

indeed, that everything must fit his purpose for my salvation.

Therefore, by his Holy Spirit,
he also assures me of eternal life,
and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready
from now on to live for him.

The first question and answer of the Heidelberg Catechism.

There is nothing new to report on Isaiah's condition.  The community packed a high school gymnasium for Jeff's service this afternoon.  The other boys are either released from the hospital or scheduled to be released in the next few days. 

Wait and pray. 

That is the job we have been given. 

Another note from our pastor:

We have heard some troubling news this morning from the neurosurgeon about Isaiah. The MRI has been read and we have learned that our Isaiah is suffering from “diffuse brain shake”. There are many bruises throughout the brain, but two particularly of great concern. One is in the area that effects communication between the left and right sides of the brain. This is very critical. Also, in the area of the brain that helps wake you up out of a coma.

We are all very concerned.

If Isaiah does not awake from this the prognosis is not good. The EEG showed a slow pattern, which was what was expected. The good news is that it did not show any signs of seizures. We need to continue to pray for Isaiah that he would awake from the coma and tell us of his great adventures. We all love him so much.

In Jeremiah 29:11-12 we read of a promise which the Prophet gave to the nation of Israel in her darkest hour. Even a candle shines the brightest in the deepest darkness. The Lord told that despairing nation. “I know the plans I have for you says the Lord, plans of good and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Such a people had just been trampled by an unstoppable army. But, instead of these words being trite, they were a powerful encouragement. A future and a hope are ahead, unstoppable, coming, set in the unchanging plans of God. We are told this when nothing we see can confirm it at this time. But, It is our Lord who holds the future, He has told us this and therefore we have hope.

God’s people along with God’s whole creation groan, in travail, as in child birth Paul says in Romans. We groan….waiting, waiting, waiting. But waiting in Hope, hope, hope. We shall all one day awake and we shall spend eternity sharing our adventures. But until then we wait, Pray that the Lord would allow Isaiah to wait with us.